A Theory of Consumption
In Albert's book, marines make do
with powdered eggs in the jungles of 'Nam;
the cracking of shells is superfluous there.
In Martha's photos, starving Hutu children
regard clay bowls with wary eyes —
high contrast to the price-clicking glances
we run over supermarket towers of tin
cold and edged with an unearthly glow.
What we know is that goods and their flow
have engendered their own brand of physics
where, this far along, they no longer belong
in the same world as matter, no longer are
either created or destroyed.
They change form, they mutate
in a matrix of waste. Take our kitchen,
for example, tonight, in the light that partakes
of the supermarket's light, borrowed,
a personal portion to go along with each
brown bag and every receipt.
The cherries are radishes too far gone;
the snow peas sail over the rim of the wok
to convert into symbols of our summer's end.
The lemon, that meddling and concerned-
seeming friend, can be tossed out as well —
what weeping is left for it to do would burn
through the numbness of our fingers which,
for now, have forgotten their blisters.
And the knives are never sharp enough —
just the passive-aggressive fretting apart
of the gummy, ambivalent flesh of fowl,
nothing certain, like the fiat of lightning
slicing sheer the beginnings from the ends.
The heart of the room hums complacently —
that upright, tooth-white sarcophagus
for food. When bugs get in the grain,
a thousand cakes go down the drain
— Poor Richard says, or something like it.
What was cooked as cabbage could be lettuce
after all; a common rabbit wouldn't care.
And though the parsley in the yard
is undeniably filthy, at least it speaks
its origins, springing back with every drop
of rustbelt rain that smacks it, a crowd
of lashes blinking out
their own green time.
The pot of water's boiling the proverbial
get-on-with-it. So we do, good lab technicians,
making analogues for what is lacking most,
exhuming from the crisper the shapes
that resemble what it was we thought
we sought and purchased in the first place.
Rapunzel, with Internet Access
My two most powerful men have been absorbed
by the government
and I can't get to them, so swathed are they
in security. The one
makes war, the other makes love in the sweetest
of European cities. So un-public
are their email addresses; I knew them
before there even was
an Internet. The one designs weapons;
the other's an ambassador who
spins information and patronizes arts.
I hardly ever think of them
unless this haze comes over me
(usually when I can't sleep)
and then I stare into the magic mirror
and never ask
"Am I the fairest one of all?" when I can hide
behind Boolean operators
and pretend it's just a hey-
how-are-you-doing call.
This haze that comes over me — like the feeling
felt by toys and other things that run
on batteries, just before the batteries
run out: Power! Power!
Do I have it? Can I touch it?
Do they ever think of me while guiding missiles
or introducing Parisians to
the best American poetry?
Twenty years, thirty — when
does the statute of limitations
run out? It always feels more urgent
than it actually is, this need
to find them once or twice a year,
as if they are Rapunzels
being kept by Uncle Sam
and I must rescue them
from the tower they won't rescue
me from. And then it's over,
just like sex. I power off
and see the present tense
take shape around my shoulders. Dishes.
Light bills. Snoring twins. The strong
rope of hair that's graying
at the roots. The fire escape
that makes the whole thing moot.
